man & nature # 41 ~ the flow of time
Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 09:07AM 
Time flows on • click to embiggenYesterday's entry regarding time drew a few but diverse number of responses, a few of which I'll try to address in today's entry.
The easiest one to answer is Aaron's question; ... portraits too? not candid or narrative portrait photography...but something more along the lines of Mapplethorpe?
It would be easy to say that, above all, time is most evident in portraits - I mean, people age and grow and change in so many ways - but I won't. Simply because I see convoluted time in so many genré of photography. To some, the possibility of time may be more obvious in portraiture, but not so for me - it's there in portraits the same as it is in the picture of a rock.
Anil asked if the same held true for "abstracts". If by "abstracts", Anil means pictures like his Desert Dreams pictures, then the answer is "yes". In "abstracts" of the natural world - or even abstracts of a more man-made variety, time is very evident to my eye and sensibilities.
To be perfectly concise, as Matt mentioned (and Cedric questioned), time itself and the notion of time are two of the medium's most important contexts, or, integral characteristics. Think about it. After all, at its most basic level every photograph ever created uses time in the form of a timed shutter as one of the essential ingredients in its making.
It is beyond me to think how a photograph can be seen or understood so as to negate or be divorced from the many notions of time contained therein.
Cedric has opined that the photographs in yesterday's entry were "timeless (in the sense that they do not evoke a sense of time) to anyone but the photographer and anyone directly connected to them", a point with which I most hardily disagree. Everything about them, again to my eye and sensibilities, screams about time to me.
The light in both pictures is quite obviously of a highly temporary and rapidly changing nature - the little spot of light in the left-hand picture most obviously so. Turn your head and it's gone. Both images have as their primary referent - in addition to the characteristic of transient light that they share - organic matter. Need I say more about the transient / changing nature of organic matter over time?
And, to address Andreas' comment, Re: how do you combine / what are your criteria? (2 pictures to form a diptych/diptychon), part of the connective-ness of these 2 seemingly at first disparate pictures, is the notion of time - the picture of the natural world suggests the passage of time primarily as a slow thing, one could even say glacial in as much as the erratic was dropped there during the last Ice Age. Just image that passage of time and the implied passage of future time that thing sits in the midst of.
On the other hand, the passage of time in the picture of the man-made arrangement is much more "quick". The natural organic stuff - the flowers - will come and go in a very short period of time (ahhh, my beloved decay) as compared to, say the much older tree in today's entry. And the arrangement of all of the stuff in that picture can be gone in less than a minute if I (or the wife) decide for it to be so. The arrangement would then be replaced some future arrangement.
Underlying the elements of time - both "glacial" and "quick" - is the implied narrative that just as humankind can change the man-made arrangement, he can, and is, at the very least, helping change the "arrangement" depicted in the picture of the natural world.
I would also comment that neither of these pictures require that the viewer have specific knowledge / memories of them in order to connect with time - past, present, future - as represented and suggested in them.
"Nuff said by me - I've got a train to catch (to NYC and a photo gallery crawl). I would like to read more from you.
Reader Comments (3)
Well at least we know how Hugo feels about this.
I often talk about photographs having a "Timeless" quality to them. Meaning, it is hard for the average viewer to tell when the photograph was taken. (Was it 1940, 1973, or yesterday???) An isolated black and white shot of Big Ben obviously shows the exact time the picture was taken, but it can also have a "timeless" quality to it ... Maybe I should say it has an "ageless" quality.?.?
Your view is clearer to me now. There is no denying that since all phenomena exist in time then any image of a phenomena will include the element of time. Similarly it is in the nature of all phenomenal things to change as time perceptibly moves on and photographs do indeed capture this notion exceptionally well. Especially at the hands of a gifted photographer.
I would like to suggest however, that the appreciation and understanding of an image can go beyond the notions of time. I would go as far as to say that in some circumstances such notions, while always present, can be ignored and in that moment the noumenal nature of the image can be seen. Just as your eyes and sensibilities focus on the timely aspect of a photograph, mine tend to go for the cognition of the apparently hidden forms as pointed to by the subject of the photograph. I doubt I am expressing myself well, at least not as well as you express yourself in which case I apologise.
Essentially what I am alluring to is that time is not seen, felt or experienced in the same way by all people. As I mentioned in my previous comment I place little importance on time. While some people see things as always changing I see change as eternal with no begining and no end, in other words, timeless. With time seeming somewhat illusionary to me, perhaps I am simply dis-illusioned :)
Kind Regards,
Cedric.